Month: July 2015

We had a pretty fun weekend mostly spent traumatizing Indy (in the best way, I promise it’s good for her).

We forced her to socialize at the new Raleigh Beer Garden on Friday. They have 366 beers on tap! It’s pretty freakin sweet.

On Saturday, I took her on a super long walk after I ran some hills outside which was a horrible idea in July.

But the best part was Sunday…

Steve and I drove out to Lake Wheeler to test out Indy’s new life jacket! It is totes adorbs. And by that I mean she hates it and it’s hilarious to watch her hate it.

It even comes with handles so we can pick her up like this!

We got this for her, because she really likes to swim in the summer to cool off, but she tends to freak out if she can’t touch the bottom of the lake/stream/river. So, this gives her a little extra boost to feel more comfortable in the water.

As with most things though. Indy hated it and was terrified of it at first.

She even ignored fresh salmon!

Just look at that indignant face. That is total sass.

One box of smoked salmon later, she had her longest swim and didn’t need any encouragement to jump in and swim around! #success

After our tour through wine country, most of Amanda’s family headed back to the states while we went on to Berlin. William made a few scattered appearances here and in London but for the most part it was just the two of us from here on out. We hopped aboard our AirBerlin flight to… Berlin and left old Europe behind for a more modern feel.

We took a walking tour and had an awesome tour guide. He asked us all sorts of thought provoking questions to get us to think about each destination as we walked there and taught us a lot about the History of Berlin which I’m sure Amanda remembers much better than I do considering how long I keep forgetting to update the blog and how many times I tried to remember what I had for breakfast this morning before remembering that I didn’t have any breakfast (this was well after lunch time which I also didn’t find time for) although maybe it makes a little sense that I couldn’t remember anything since I hadn’t eaten anything which tends to make my brain struggle a little and makes me forget stuff and ramble on and…I’m gonna have to through this in here even though it was from the end of our stay in Germany. We got Kebaps in the Turkish neighborhood at the suggestion of one of our friends. Hi Murat! They were sooooo good.

let’s see… where were we. Oh yes! Pariser Platz! So named to humiliate the French after Paris was overthrown by Prussia (Germany) with Allied troops. I wish I could remember all the details of this because it was kind of a funny story.

Marching through the Brandenburg gate seen here was kind of a symbol of conquering Germany. This was the only structure remaining in the square after the bombing during WWII.

Also in Pariser Platz is another famous building. You might recognize the Hotel Adlon below where Michael Jackson hung a baby over the balcony! We didn’t stay here because the hostels are so much cheaper and we both have a phobia of being hung over balconies.

This is the memorial to the Jewish people who lost their lives during the Holocaust. It was very controversial when it was built because memorials typically have plaques and signs to tell you the history of what happened. This memorial doesn’t have any of that. It’s built to make the visitor think and feel things instead of learn facts and dates. The blocks get taller as you go toward the middle of the memorial and as you travel in it gets colder and darker. The ground goes up and down with steep little hills like waves in an ocean. It makes some people think of drowning, some of being lost in the cold and dark. There is no official meaning from the architect so that everyone can interpret the memorial for themselves and experience their own feelings which I think makes it more powerful than just a history lesson.

Any trip to Berlin wouldn’t be complete without seeing the remains of the Berlin wall. This dotted metal line in the ground marked where the wall used to be. There will be some pictures later of the East Side Gallery with remaining wall segments covered with graffiti.

I don’t really know what this building was but it was cool looking so we took a selfie 😀 I’m pretty sure this was on the

I looked it up on wiki I remembered that this was a cathedral on Museum Island that was very cool looking.

On our way from Museum Island to Potsdamer Platz we passed Poseidon’s fountain which was pretty bad ass

Here you can see the first version of the Berlin wall being constructed in Potsdamer Platz. There was a deadzone between lengths of barbed wire and anti tank fence pieces where anyone caught would be captured or shot

And finally here are some images from the East Side Gallery

Pretty powerful image here

Life imitates art

This one was pretty far out 😀

That’s about it for Germany, at least for now. I left some cool pictures out since the post was getting a little long so I might add some more in later.

Stay tuned to hear about tapas, the beach on the Mediterranean Sea, liters of sangria and drinking out of cool medieval drinking vessels in Barcelona!

It’s Friday…Friday…gotta get down on Friday (sings to self cause I’m a nerd like that)

Please tell me you guys have some awesome plans for the weekend, because my plans are unpacking and cleaning…ugh. Need to live vicariously through other people this weekend.

In random news, have you ever seen a pineapple plant?

Now you have! The weird part about this is that it is inside the Textiles Engineering building. Pineapple<–>textiles<–>confused Amanda?? Note to everyone in this building though, I TOTALLY CALL THAT PINEAPPLE WHEN IT’S RIPE ENOUGH TO EAT

Workout world wise (yes I’m smiling gleefully at that alliteration) I did a quick 35 min treadmill sesh because I don’t enjoy feeling like death and drowning in sweat while I run. At least my view isn’t bad

I threw some intervals in there while rocking out to the newest Fall Out Boy album (fast pace was a 7:30 min/mile or 8mph and slow was about a 9 min/mile) and got in 3.8 miles

Afterwards, because our gym has a ballet bar and I insist on using it and because stretching is important, I stretched it out in our aerobics room!

How was your 4th of July? My brother stayed with us last week on his month-long break from living and teaching in Moscow (?!?!?!super cool right?) and then we had a rockin 72hrs in Guntersville, AL for the annual family reunion (for my fam). So this is our first ‘normal’ week since….early May? We have finally moved, traveled, met deadlines, visited family, traveled some more, and slept a lot.

Here we are all piled into my car for the 9 hour drive.

-side note I need to remind Steve to finish recapping our Europe trip, but we’ll see how that goes 🙂 –

Now is as good a time as any to get back to blogging on a regular basis right?

First off, LOOK AT THIS GINORMOUS STRAWBERRY! That is all. one. strawberry. How do you even eat that?!? Never mind, I’ll figure out a way 🙂

Summer is the best for awesome fruit and I have no shame about eating my weight in fruit, veggies, basil, and cilantro for the next couple of months. Fruit = happy Amanda!

In other exciting events I’ve had the energy and patience to start cooking again 🙂

Monday, I did up some pan-seared cod (seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice) with some awesome strawberry salsa and cilantro lime rice….(insert heart-eyed emoji here for this crazy colorful dinner)

Hopefully, some new recipes will start coming your way soon! If nothing else, at least some food porn.

With this extra energy, I have also started working out again (for those not in the know, I kinda stopped working out for like, 2 solid months because ya know energy and busy and school and all). Since it’s 100000 degrees outside, running is not the best idea so I’ve been sticking to the indoor strength workouts for now.

Aaaaand yesterday we threw in some P90x Shoulders and Arms since Steve officially tore his ACL in Prague and can’t do much with his legs. Sometimes its really nice to zone out and follow the energetic people on TV rather than trying to come up with your own routine.

I gotta head back to work now, but just wanted to check in with you guys to make sure you haven’t forgotten about our shenanigans!

Wine on wheels! Hopefully google translate served me well there. Well, I’ve really been slacking here. Amanda is a little fed up with me because I said I wanted to post some of the Europe trip stuff but haven’t gotten around to it and she’s been waiting on me before she posted again, so here it is finally. In my defense I’ve been doing a lot of important stuff that she didn’t have time for.

Hello, Austria! You’ll see many pictures of our bike tour through wine country (which was amazing) and barely any of Vienna because the city was really kinda boring compared to Budapest and Prague. We met up with the rest of Amanda’s family and maybe 15 other people for the tour. We road the train out to our starting point and rented bikes. Here we are at the start, Catherine was very excited about visiting the Kremser Bank.

We started riding out of town. My knee was still pretty sore at this point and not very flexible. Jacking the seat way way up had the double effect of making me only a few inches shorter than our tour guide and letting me peddle without having to bend it too much. Look how happy it made me!!

One of our stops enjoying delicious Austrian wine. Here’s a great pic of everyone except me!

And here we are with Amanda’s brothers. We’re about to drink apricot schnapps with a big chunk of alcohol soaked apricot in it. It was delicious! We also got a bottle opener souvenir for a friend in this little town. It was hand carved from apricot wood. Do you notice a theme here??

After the Schnapps my buzz was strong enough to attempt the climb up to the ruined fortress seen below. King Richard the Lionheart was held in the dungeons here for a while. I made it most of the way up but decided not to push my knee too hard. We had a couple great views during the climb although I wish I had seen the view from all the way up top

On the way up we spotted this colorful little lizard bro. He let me get nice and close for a good picture I named him Eidschse mit blauem gesicht or lizard with blue face 😀

I have to give Dan credit for one of the more hilarious photobombs I’ve seen here. He was having a great time ruining our pictures 🙂

Lunch involved stopping at the house of a local family who helped with the bike tours. We had a huge grill full of sausages going when we arrived and were given plenty of potato salad and wine to go with them. The cheese filled bacon wrapped sausages were incredible!

And finally a pic of boring old Vienna. Here’s the opera house that I took a picture of mostly because I felt like I should. It was a cool building though.

We wrapped things up with coffee and dessert before heading back to our hostel.

This marks the end of the first week and most of Amanda’s family heading back home. Still to come, Berlin with stories of amazing walking tours, pictures of great architecture and puke-boy. After that you’ll hear about our Sangria fueled trip through Barcelona, or at least as much as we can remember 😉